At some point in this tournament I'm going to "protest" vote against
Guns n Roses because (IMHO) they should not be in a Hair Metal Band
Tourney. But it won't be in this matchup. Here I'm not voting FOR
Guns n Roses as a Hair Metal Band, but voting AGAINST Britny Fox for
trying to be a hair metal band.

GUNS n ROSES ....... THE best R&BROCK BAND of the post 70s.
BRITNY FOX ....... Nice attempt as an imitation of Cinderella

100% agree with you about GNR. They came along during the end of the hair metal era but were not a hair metal/glam rock band. They deserve to be put in the same group with The Who, the Stones, even dare I say it Led Zeppelin as just one of the greatest rock n roll bands of all time.

100% agree with you about GNR. They came along during the end of the hair metal era but were not a hair metal/glam rock band. They deserve to be put in the same group with The Who, the Stones, even dare I say it Led Zeppelin as just one of the greatest rock n roll bands of all time.

Absolutely.
There was a big wave of Good R&B Rock bands that came along in the
late 70s that "sort of" carried the torch for the early pioneers of Rock.
Van Halen, Cheap Trick, ZZ Top etc..... starting around 1980 (the coming
of MTV) "Rock" music kind of morphed into this large melting pot of "Stuff" !?!?
Bands having a good SOUND wasn't the most important thing anymore, so
much as they had to be "Pretty" so MTV could market them in videos.
I really didn't even call most of it ROCK n ROLL. Hate using the term, but
the majority of the early 80s stuff was "Gay Rock". ... Frankie Goes to
Hollywood, The Thompson Twins, Kajagoogoo, Crowed House, Big Country
etc.... Even the good rock bands that came out of the 80s were "fluffed
Up" to look good in videos. The Pretenders, U2, Men at Work, INXS.....
Even The Police (a band I really liked), came out of the Punk Rock
movement of the late 70s, but got "MTV'd" into trying to Look good
and sound good too.

IMO, the two best ROCK artists out of the post 70s was Guns n Roses
and Tom Petty. Wasn't what you'd call "Pretty" or visually appealing, but
they were the last gasp of what Real Rock music used to be. Unfortunately,
after they got out of their prime, there hasn't been another band / act
to pick up where they left off. ... IMO, Rock and Roll died with them.

At some point in this tournament I'm going to "protest" vote against
Guns n Roses because (IMHO) they should not be in a Hair Metal Band
Tourney. But it won't be in this matchup. Here I'm not voting FOR
Guns n Roses as a Hair Metal Band, but voting AGAINST Britny Fox for
trying to be a hair metal band.

GUNS n ROSES ....... THE best R&BROCK BAND of the post 70s. BRITNY FOX ....... Nice attempt as an imitation of Cinderella

Agree with Spurt 100% on this. GnR not a hair band. However, I would vote for a monkey over Britny Fox. Don't try and rip off Cinderella.

Even though GnR isn't a hair band, if BF loses this I'm done with this tournament. BF is a joke.

GNR absolutely belongs in this tournament and is just as much of a "hair metal" band as most of the others. They came out of the same LA scene as most of the others, they sang about the same stuff (sex and drugs), and they even had the requisite power ballads for the ladies in the audience. They were just better and had a wider range of influences. In particular, they took a lot from Hanoi Rocks. Of course, like all the best bands within any scene, GNR (and Hanoi Rocks), transcended the most superficial conception of their scene, but GNR still belongs to that family. When they first came to Columbia (before Appetite was even released), they were opening for Motley Crüe. That isn't an accident. That pairing made sense.

Part of the problem is using a pejorative label "hair metal" in the first place, because it makes us reluctant to apply it to bands we want to take seriously. If we limit hair metal to Poison, Warrant, and other bands that were shamelessly riding the bandwagon, then all hair metal sucks. On the other hand, we could include bands from that same universe who still managed to have integrity and chops, like GNR, The Cult, Tesla, Cindarella, etc. Labels always apply imperfectly, anyway, so there isn't anything to be pure about in the first place.

Well I've already enraged several Hanoi Rocks fans like Transmaniacon for voting up Britny Fox into the Top 16 in place of HR, so I figure I might as well go all-in and place a token vote for BF here, in large part because I disagree with GNR being Hair Metal, despite Transmaniacon's well crafted argument :ducks rotten fruit and empty hairspray cans:

]GNR absolutely belongs in this tournament and is just as much of a "hair metal" band as most of the others. They came out of the same LA scene as most of the others, they sang about the same stuff (sex and drugs), and they even had the requisite power ballads for the ladies in the audience.[/b] They were just better and had a wider range of influences. In particular, they took a lot from Hanoi Rocks. Of course, like all the best bands within any scene, GNR (and Hanoi Rocks), transcended the most superficial conception of their scene, but GNR still belongs to that family. When they first came to Columbia (before Appetite was even released), they were opening for Motley Crüe. That isn't an accident. That pairing made sense.

Part of the problem is using a pejorative label "hair metal" in the first place, because it makes us reluctant to apply it to bands we want to take seriously. If we limit hair metal to Poison, Warrant, and other bands that were shamelessly riding the bandwagon, then all hair metal sucks. On the other hand, we could include bands from that same universe who still managed to have integrity and chops, like GNR, The Cult, Tesla, Cindarella, etc. Labels always apply imperfectly, anyway, so there isn't anything to be pure about in the first place.

Sorry for the rant.

Ted Nugent, Grand Funk Railroad, Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels,
Humble Pie, Bob Seger... among a LOT Of other Rock bands came out of the
mid 60s Detroit Michigan area scene, but I definitely wouldn't categorize
them as MOTOWN. As stated earlier, The Police started playing in the
same bars and had the same "style" of music as British Punk Rock, but
they were far from a Punk Rock band. All those artists sang about the same
thing as Rock artists of any style sang about since the 50s (Love,Sex, Drugs heartbreak).
They played upbeat harder edge stuff, and most of them did ballads as well.
When you compare the early pioneers of "Hair Metal" artists (Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, RATT, etc..)
and even those that came along when the door was opened, to
Guns N Roses, the DISTINCT difference in appearance, musical style,
and appeal is as different as night and day. The "Labels" that are placed
on music styles are done so by the various media outlets to differentiate
musical tastes of the artists to the fans that follow them. I use the
term "Hair Band" simply because it's what it was best known for during the
later part of the 80s, and beyond (after it's time had past). I never cared
for the term placed on them at the time as "Metal" (of any kind), so I
simply call it "Hair Band". Basically it's just another type of Rock Music
that had a distinctly different approach and "look".
It's like the 70s, when the media and critics labeled the various popular
forms of Rock during that time. "Hard Rock", Acid Rock", R&B, Psychedelia,
Pop etc..... It's all Rock Music.
The idea behind this tournament was to find out what the members here
thought was the best BAND, that best fit the music that was labeled
under the name "Hair Metal" "Glam Metal" "Hair Band" and a few others.

As for the Opinion that GNR is NOT a Hair Metal Band...... I'm sticking to it.

Ted Nugent, Grand Funk Railroad, Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels,
Humble Pie, Bob Seger... among a LOT Of other Rock bands came out of the
mid 60s Detroit Michigan area scene, but I definitely wouldn't categorize
them as MOTOWN. As stated earlier, The Police started playing in the
same bars and had the same "style" of music as British Punk Rock, but
they were far from a Punk Rock band. All those artists sang about the same
thing as Rock artists of any style sang about since the 50s (Love,Sex, Drugs heartbreak).
They played upbeat harder edge stuff, and most of them did ballads as well.
When you compare the early pioneers of "Hair Metal" artists (Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, RATT, etc..)
and even those that came along when the door was opened, to
Guns N Roses, the DISTINCT difference in appearance, musical style,
and appeal is as different as night and day. The "Labels" that are placed
on music styles are done so by the various media outlets to differentiate
musical tastes of the artists to the fans that follow them. I use the
term "Hair Band" simply because it's what it was best known for during the
later part of the 80s, and beyond (after it's time had past). I never cared
for the term placed on them at the time as "Metal" (of any kind), so I
simply call it "Hair Band". Basically it's just another type of Rock Music
that had a distinctly different approach and "look".
It's like the 70s, when the media and critics labeled the various popular
forms of Rock during that time. "Hard Rock", Acid Rock", R&B, Psychedelia,
Pop etc..... It's all Rock Music.
The idea behind this tournament was to find out what the members here
thought was the best BAND, that best fit the music that was labeled
under the name "Hair Metal" "Glam Metal" "Hair Band" and a few others.

As for the Opinion that GNR is NOT a Hair Metal Band...... I'm sticking to it.

At the outset, I just want to stress that I don't mean to be as argumentative as I may sound. But I was a 13 year old kid obsessed with this world back then and think there's some revisionist history going on to some extent. At the time GNR fit pretty squarely in a family of numerous bands (most of them long forgotten) from the LA sleazy metal scene that pulled from a bunch of influences, most notably glam and many other bad-boy rock of the 70s (Stones, Aerosmith, Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, Nugent, and so on). At least, they did until they became absurdly huge, at which point they were their own brand.

And, just to be clear, my point about GNR coming from the same scene as the other bands isn't about being from LA, precisely, but rather the same specific cultural universe as Motley Crüe, LA Guns, Faster Pussycat, and other Sunset Strip bands of that stripe. If you picked up the magazines that covered this music back then (Circus, Kerrang, Metal Edge, etc.), GNR was unquestionably front and center.

I can agree that GNR has its own personality, but then again so did most of the better bands we've included with less protest. And, truth be told, GNR actually does look a lot like one band--Hanoi Rocks, a band from Finland/England that pulled a lot from 70s glam like Mott the Hoople. Izzy dressed just like McKay from Hanoi Rocks, and Axl's hair in the Welcome to the Jungle video is exactly like Michael Monroe's from Hanoi.

As you say, it is all just rock, and the labels are simply imperfect attempts to draw cultural and musicological lines to help us categorize. The best bands always prove more difficult, and GNR is no exception. You can tell from Steven Adler's TSOL tshirts back in the day that GNR was keeping an eye on other scenes in LA, not to mention more classic fare like Aerosmith (as the "Mama Kin" cover shows). But, Nirvana still gets the grunge label despite a wide variety of influences from every corner of music. Bad Brains and Black Flag still get the "hard core" label despite the influence of jazz, metal, reggae (for Bad Brains) and Grateful Dead (for Black Flag). So, my only point was that we not be purist about these labels, primarily so that we can include the more interesting examples associated with the label.

At the outset, I just want to stress that I don't mean to be as argumentative as I may sound. But I was a 13 year old kid obsessed with this world back then and think there's some revisionist history going on to some extent. At the time GNR fit pretty squarely in a family of numerous bands (most of them long forgotten) from the LA sleazy metal scene that pulled from a bunch of influences, most notably glam and many other bad-boy rock of the 70s (Stones, Aerosmith, Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, Nugent, and so on). At least, they did until they became absurdly huge, at which point they were their own brand.

And, just to be clear, my point about GNR coming from the same scene as the other bands isn't about being from LA, precisely, but rather the same specific cultural universe as Motley Crüe, LA Guns, Faster Pussycat, and other Sunset Strip bands of that stripe. If you picked up the magazines that covered this music back then (Circus, Kerrang, Metal Edge, etc.), GNR was unquestionably front and center.

I can agree that GNR has its own personality, but then again so did most of the better bands we've included with less protest. And, truth be told, GNR actually does look a lot like one band--Hanoi Rocks, a band from Finland/England that pulled a lot from 70s glam like Mott the Hoople. Izzy dressed just like McKay from Hanoi Rocks, and Axl's hair in the Welcome to the Jungle video is exactly like Michael Monroe's from Hanoi.

As you say, it is all just rock, and the labels are simply imperfect attempts to draw cultural and musicological lines to help us categorize. The best bands always prove more difficult, and GNR is no exception. You can tell from Steven Adler's TSOL tshirts back in the day that GNR was keeping an eye on other scenes in LA, not to mention more classic fare like Aerosmith (as the "Mama Kin" cover shows). But, Nirvana still gets the grunge label despite a wide variety of influences from every corner of music. Bad Brains and Black Flag still get the "hard core" label despite the influence of jazz, metal, reggae (for Bad Brains) and Grateful Dead (for Black Flag). So, my only point was that we not be purist about these labels, primarily so that we can include the more interesting examples associated with the label.

Let me be clear on this as well.
One of the main reasons I have continued to do these tournaments, is
because I LOVE to hear people's opinions on whatever we are doing them
about. I know going into these threads when the various genres are
posted that there are going to be people who don't agree with my point,
and I won't agree with a lot of other people's opinions as well. Whether
I agree with your opinion or not, or just because I post a response to
your stated opinion with my point does not mean I don't like what you
said. The discussion that goes along with the various matchups in all
these tournaments we've done have been very interesting to me, and
I wouldn't want that to change. Just because our opinions are different
doesn't mean I want to be argumentative. I may not agree with your
opinion but I resect it very much.